I had a therapy appointment yesterday where I learned a whole new paradigm for how to best heal with my IFS parts.
I have been practicing IFS therapy for about a year now with my therapist who is well versed in how our parts work together. I thought I really had a handle on it, but as it turns out, while I am getting good at meeting and talking with my IFS parts, I did have a wrong paradigm going for what I was expecting from them.
Yesterday, I was shown by a real expert that it's not about integrating parts, it's about unblending them.
Up until yesterday, I was celebrating the belief that proper therapy is to integrate all our parts into a cohesive team. But now I've been corrected.
My therapist debunked that integration theory for me yesterday. He remarked that Integrating is a common mistake done by psychologists all over the world who believe this. When I think about what my T said yesterday, I can see that..."Oh Yeah! Our parts are already integrated. THAT'S the problem!" They're a mixed-up tangle, not unlike a confusing mass of multiple strands of Christmas Lights wadded into a nasty ball. According to my T, IFS therapy is best used to "unblend" my parts from one another. Unblend might not be a dictionary word, but it gave me a lot of peace. Unblend is a peaceful word that doesn't lead to removal. Unblending is just untangling, but slightly more descriptive to our goal. I can't think of another word that fits here. If I want to hang the Christmas lights on the house, I HAVE to unblend them first. To make sense of all my IFS parts, I need to untangle them from the ball and talk with each of them, one by one. Like a manager who is doing career consultations with each employee, I have to meet and love each part that lives within me. Each part is a unique personality who gives me a uniquely simple self-protection. To integrate them right back into the other parts is to lose them again like losing a needle in a haystack. But once Unblended, I can now identify each of them individually when they come up in daily life. The confusion of "why did I react that way?" is more easily cut through when I know which part came to the front and why they reacted how they did.
I think he's right. As I meet my IFS parts, one at a time, sometimes two or three at once, I am able to unblend them from the others without losing them in the tangled mess that brought me to therapy in the first place.
I feel like this new information for me is going to only enhance the benefits I'm getting from IFS therapy. Unblend might not be a real word, but it feels like it's the perfect word to help me come at my IFS parts with even more respect, reverence, and love.
Yes, that. And what I read in Richard Schwartz's 'No Bad Parts' is that in addition to these parts, there is what he calls 'the Self'. This is 'an essence of calm, clarity, compassion and connectedness' that we all have but that we cannot always see, because the parts are blended with it. Whenever parts go unrecognised, is how I see it, they blend with the Self and take over. So not only do we need to unblend the parts from each other, we also need to unblend them from the Self.